Jamyang Gyaltsen, Eastchester High School

Jun. 10, 2011

Jamyang Gyaltsen grew up in a family of nomadic yak farmers in Tibet. To immigrate to the United States, he had to trek across the Himalayas as a young teenager. He started at Eastchester High School in ninth grade speaking no English and with no formal schooling. / Tania Savayan/The Journal News

Written by

Heather Salerno

After Jamyang Gyaltsen graduates from Eastchester High School later this month, he'll be the first member of his family to go to a four-year college and live away from home.

But Gyaltsen's achievement is even more remarkable because he'd never attended school at all before entering the ninth grade at Eastchester. Born in Tibet, he spent his childhood herding yaks with his nomadic family until they decided to come to America, a dangerous journey that took them four long years.

"(My dad) was never happy because he doesn't want us to follow him (and be) nomadic," says Gyaltsen, who's 18. "He wanted a better life for us."

Gyaltsen's father left Tibet first, obtaining a visa in 2003 and heading to Westchester, since his sister lives in Bronxville. Gyaltsen, his mother and four siblings expected to follow close behind him, so they moved from the countryside to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

But their request for visas was denied by the Chinese embassy; the two countries have been at odds for centuries, even more so since the 1959 Tibetan uprising against China, during which the Dalai Lama fled to India. The same visa request was then refused by India, where thousands of Tibetan refugees also have settled over the years.

So Gyaltsen's mother chose to make their way across the Himalayan Mountains in order to reach a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal.

She believed it would be safer to split up, though, after hearing stories of Chinese border patrols shooting and killing Tibetans. "If you got caught, it was your whole family. It's really bad," says Gyaltsen. He and his older sister traveled together for 20 days, sleeping in caves and using a rope to swing over rushing rapids. If he'd fallen into the water, he says, "there was no hope to survive."

After arriving safely in Nepal, Gyaltsen and his sister went on to New Delhi and then to Dharamsala in India, where they reunited with the rest of the family. Dharamsala is where the Dalai Lama now resides, and Gyaltsen had the opportunity to meet the Buddhist leader there: "It was one of my biggest dreams."

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Finally, in June 2007, all of his family members were able to get visas and relocate to the United States. But Gyaltsen's struggles were far from over. He began classes at Eastchester completely bewildered: "It was really hard with new people, a new place, a new language. I'd never held a pen, really."

Determined to learn English as quickly as possible, he watched cartoons, read comic books and woke up at 5 a.m. to study. To improve his conversational skills, he would go to local parks and join basketball games — even though he admits that he's a terrible player.

"They get mad that I mess up, but who cares?" he laughs.

School counselor Janice Crisci says that she's constantly amazed by Gyaltsen's quest for self-improvement. He always signs up for student trips to Manhattan, even though he hates the noise and crowds in the city.

"But he comes on every trip to learn and be exposed to something new," she says.

A tranquil setting is one reason Gyaltsen has chosen to attend Elizabethtown College in bucolic Lancaster County, Penn. He's also pleased that the college offers programs that promote peace and justice, since one of his future dreams is to build a school in Tibet.

"In Tibet, many people are poor ... so we don't really have good teachers there," he says. "I want (to help) the Tibetan people."